The present invention relates to a water ride, and more particularly a revolving water ride for transporting ride participants between portions of a water attraction disposed at different heights, for example, pools situated at various levels in a water leisure park.
Water rides which move a user from an upper level to a lower level are well-known in the leisure industry. Such water rides take the form of slides or flumes where the user is carried downhill both by the flow of water and gravity. However, once a user has descended by various routes to the lower levels of a water park, which is a combination of a number of different water rides, the only means of ascending to the upper levels is by way of a traditional stairway or ladder. Participants would ordinarily have to climb steps in order to reach higher level water rides while having to handle an inflatable carrier or other floatation device, which is often cumbersome, in order to prepare for a down-hill water flume ride, creating potential hazards associated with users situated on high stairways. In addition, use of inflatable carrier gantries, hoists or conveyor systems, are also frequently essential for bigger two and four person inflatable carriers, requiring additional installations.
The principle of the Archimedes' screw has been used for the upward transport of water from a low-lying body of water since at least the times of ancient Greece. The basic device consists of a screw housed inside a hollow pipe. In operation, a bottom of the tube, oriented in an inclined position, is placed in a body of water, such that when the screw is caused to rotate, water is trapped between the threads of the screw and transported longitudinally along the spiral path defined by the screw thread to the top end of the tube, where it is discharged.
Various modifications on this original approach are know to have been applied generally to the upward transport of various substances, including articles and living creatures, such as, for example, fish.
Further known variations of the basic principle afforded by the Archimedes' screw have been adopted in specific connection with water park applications, as disclosed, for example, in PCT Published Application WO 98/45006. The described water ride, for use in a leisure park, includes an inclined hollow rotating tube having a screw thread on an internal surface thereof. According to this approach, one end of the tube is positioned at a lower water level and the opposite end of the tube is positioned at a higher water level such that the tube assumes an inclined orientation between two pools of water different in height. A participant of the ride entering the tube at the lower water level, for example, on an inner tube or other floatation device, is carried to the higher water level in water pockets formed between the pitch of the thread within the tube and which are moved in the longitudinal direction along the internal screw thread as the tube rotates about its axis.
While, in theory, effective for carrying out the transfer of rider participants between a lower pool and an upper pool, the previously described arrangement is difficult to manufacture because of its configuration as a convoluted pipe having the screw carrier profile molded into the varying external circumference presented thereby. In addition, such shape results in undesirable flexibility over a length thereof in commercial practice, requiring an external framework for stabilization, onto which support tracks would additionally have to be mounted to enable the unit to rotate.
It would therefore be desirable to have a water ride which overcomes the drawbacks of the prior art.
An object of the present invention, therefore, is to overcome the above noted disadvantages of the conventional water rides, and to provide a water ride which effectively transports ride participants between bodies of water disposed at different heights.